Barney Frank: “first of all, there is no chance of waiting until after it expires. I don't know why the gentleman would have said that.…”

“first of all, there is no chance of waiting until after it expires. I don't know why the gentleman would have said that. He knows there is zero chance of that. Now, I agree it has waited too long. But I would have been more impressed with the urgency if I had had people joining us in trying to get the Senate to act. We passed the bill months ago. We would have liked to have seen an act. But I didn't hear all this passion trying to force the Senate to act, and it was partly the minority in the Senate that was blocking it, that is, block the ability to have a conference. Here is the point. I think telling the life insurance companies that they should not be restricting people's ability to travel unfairly is important. We think group life is important. We think that not allowing your community to be disadvantaged if it has been attacked once is important. And we may not be able to accomplish them this year, but we think it is important not simply to cave in and say those aren't even worth fighting for. We are going to send a message, I hope, by voting for those principles because we pass the bill this year, and we may have to accept a minimal position, but we will be back here in a month or two and we hope to renew some of these things. So I just reject the notion that the Senate can achieve this by waiting and waiting and waiting and then saying, Oh, well, there isn't enough time. There is not enough time because they held it up.”